Representations: Metaphors of the Female Body: Overview

(3,363 words)

In Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams the feminine is associated with Africa, and the sexualized female body functions as a simile for the darkness and the relative obscurity of the “dark continent.”

In contrast, the Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi gives Africa pride of place: “our eyes and faces were always facing the Mediterranean, Europe, and America, with our backs towards Africa, towards ourselves.” For her, the rejection of Africa stands for the rejection of a person's brown or black complexion and the attemp…